Intro, part Four

My theory here is that Harriet is very clear on who she is. She’s a reader. She’s not a writer manqué. She doesn’t read every book somehow on some level secretly convinced that she could have written it better herself – like some of us do. Me? Guilty as charged. I have two unpublished novels sitting under my bed – one is a little chick lit romp about a woman whose life is so boring that she feels compels to make up things so she can scrapbook them with her girlfriends (autobiographical? Says who?), while the other is a somewhat darker chick lit novel about a women’s bunco club in a certain Tidewater subdivision whose newest member turns out to be the reincarnation of the witch of Pungo (and if you’ve never heard of the real life historic Witch of Pungo you may either go look it up on Wikipedia, or you may, a la our heroine harriet decide that it really doesn’t matter and you didn’t need to know about it anyway). Neither one has been published (and truth be told, the second one hasn’t actually even been finished) though I came darned close on that first one! Had several reads by some prominent literary agents, but somehow still got that note saying, “Sorry. Not right for us.” And this after, of course, having devoured multiple how-to volumes on: how to write a novel, how to improve a novel, how to sell a novel, how to get an agent, and so forth. Harriet? Nary a whisper of interest in the topic.
All of which has left me with a bit of a mystery. Here she is the number one reviewer, arguably the most influential voice on amazon.com – and it’s a voice that lacks personality. Where is the humor? The rancor? The aggression? Can she truly say that she never read anything that made her angry? That startled her, frightened her, rocked her world? All I’m saying is that this seems strange for a librarian, for someone who has devoted her life to books.
Here’s my take on it: If you ask me, Harriet Klausner is the Antonio Salieri of book reviewing. Do you remember him? He was the guy who was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s contemporary. He’s the narrator for the play “Amadeus.” He’s the guy who wakes up early every morning, sits down at a desk and cranks out yet another symphony every year. He’s Mr. Productivity. Not Mr. Ingenuity and not a genius by any means, but someone who feels that he deserves to be an award-winning composer, simply by virtue of the fact that he’s more disciplined than his competition.
Now I’m not saying that I’m Mozart or anything, but I will tell you that it was Mozart that I was cheering for in that movie. Undisciplined, immature, full of outbursts Mozart. Who was great when he sat down and did some work, but most of the time he didn’t. When he did, what he produced was genius – moving, touching and unique. Clearly a cut above the astonishing large piles of drivel produced by Salieri, his competitor.
So there you have it. As I read all these reviews by harriet Klausner, this crazy idea started brewing in my mind. Someone needed to unseat her. Someone needed to unseat the smug librarian who never reveleaed anything personal in her reviewers, who never “loved, loved, loved” a review, who never sought salvation or absolution in a book, who never used too many exclamation points. Someone like, well, someone like me. For I am the anti-Harriet.
What do I read? Why do I read? Well, if you were to pull up my reviews on amazon.com for the past year, here’s what you’d see. I ordered:
-4 books on dealing with a child who is underachieving in school (and here I’ll freely confess I was seeking absolution, not help. It’s the same reason I’ll always buy any book with the words Bad and Mother in the title. I wanted to be told that ti wasn’t my fault and that Some Children are Just Like That (which would make a wonderful title for a book, by the way. You may use it if you like.)).
-3 books on fixing your marriage, one on learning to communicate better and one on how to stop being such a bitch (seeking salvation, not absolution here. I really do want to stop being such a bitch.)
-4 books on improving your spiritual life (most of the born-again Christian variety, though I’ll occasionally dabble in something new agey)
-countless diet books (none of which have really helped significantly. I’m still fat.)
-books on academic writing and avoiding procrastination
Are we sensing a pattern here? Perhaps reading about solving problems instead of actually solving them yourself? Kind of like the way that we’d all rather read a good cookbook or one about exercise than actually preparing the meals or taking the walk. You might even label me as undisciplined – as someone who seldom exercises, wakes up early, as someone who’s always looking for a short cut on how to clean my house (try a book by Don Aslett on that subject), as someone who is, well, fat.
Clearly, I am NOT nearly as secure as good old Harriet Klausner. I worry all the time – that I am a bad mother, a bad wife, that I am fat, that I don’t exercise enough, and that I should be more productive at work and at home. And clearly when I read a book, I AM seeking something – a fix for my problems, and somehow despite my many, many abortive attempts at fixing these problems, I still go on seeking, convinced that there, somewhere in that vast amazon warehouse lies a book (prefereably one with a pink cover and maybe a graphic of someone drinking something) that contains the answer, the SOLUTION, to all my problems. Salvation – randomly typing things into the internet